Please join us with Amanda Muratoff, Judy Stanigar, and Mariam El Houli.
Amanda Muratoff, co-author of “Embrace of the Shade” – Amarie’s legendary magic could incinerate her enemies, but it’s her sword she trusts. While running from the men who killed her family, she learns of an ancient text locked within the Great Library that might be the final key to understanding her curse. During the daring theft, a stranger inserts himself into her scheme. Kin’s roguish good looks and boundless charm threaten to distract her, but she has no intention of landing in the city jail. Kin’s life, riddled with shadows and death, is as dark as his soul. He embraces his power, given by a wicked master, but when he meets Amarie… She shatters the walls he’s built, piercing his solitude with vibrant light. But if she learns he hunts the power cursing her family, he will lose her forever. Trusting him could risk her heart and her life, but it might be the only way to destroy the world’s most sinister evil. Unless Kin’s master finds her first…
Judy Stanigar, author of “Marika’s Best Laid Plan” – Marika is a social worker trying to heal her drug addict clients, but she can’t seem to mend her damaged self. She avoids love because love sits too close to death. Her choices have left her carefully ordered life a lonely, disconnected one. Everything is about to change. Big-hearted, quirky, emotionally walled-off Marika embarks on a plan that ultimately forces her to confront the very thing she’s spent her life avoiding: love. Marika’s Best Laid Plan is story about the power of connection and hope, the things without which life is unbearable.
Mariam El Houli, author of “The Olive Tree” – Nisma is like any other 16-year-old. She goes to school, she fights with her brothers, and she loves her grandmother, Nazik. But, life for Nisma isn’t as simple as boys and books: Nisma is an Islamic Palestinian in Israel, and her new friend, Hannah, is a Zionist. When Hannah’s mother is attacked and Nisma invites the pair to live in her family home, she has no idea of the chain of events that she has set in motion. What unfolds will show Nisma that in a country shrouded by corruption, bigotry and segregation, love and compassion is her best chance at survival. A love letter to the Palestinian people, Mariam El Houli’s The Olive Tree is a heartbreaking and gripping debut – a tale of friendship, strength and loss, and the fatal consequences systematic prejudice can have on a country’s people.